Category: Newbies Section

In part 1 we looked at how to write a bash script.
We looked at the basics including the importance of shebang, how to clear your screen, take user input and evaluate it.
We also looked at how to use IF, FOR and WHILE loops in your bash script and how you may use these loops with applications or commands.
For our example we looked at how you could use a FOR loop to batch convert wav files to mp3 files.

In this part we are going to look at how you can make your script or simple programs run by themselves at given intervals.
We will also be looking at how to make your bash script look more appealing and easier with a nice GUI using Zenity.
Kdialog is also available for KDE users, but we won’t be covering them here as Zenity is the default for Ubuntu desktops.
For information specific to Kdialog check out http://mostlylinux.wordpress.com/bashscripting/kdialog/ which has great examples of using the different options for all you KDE users.

Let’s begin!

1. Full automation with Cron

Cron is a daemon used by Linux and Unix like systems that allow programs and scripts to be ran at certain times.
The Cron daemon will run constantly to check whether any cronjobs are scheduled and then run them.
This is particularly useful when you need a certain action to be performed at a certain time.
Such actions could be scheduled updates or maintenance for system administrators.
But, they could be anything you desire.

Cron and crontabs are simple to configure and once you understand how they work, you will be ready to go in no time.

Crontabs are the programs used in order to keep cron organised.
There are two types of crontabs, one is for system functions and root privileged actions, the other is for users and does not require root.

The best way to explain crontab and cron is to use it, so let’s use it.

I have a little script which will automate the update and upgrade actions of apt-get. I want this to run at 10 minutes past midnight every day.
The script is located in a directory inside my home directory called scripts/ and the script is called upgrade.sh

To begin, I want to edit my crontab.
I do this by opening a terminal, and typing ‘crontab -e’ without quotes.
Because this is the first time I’m using cron, it will ask me which editor I would like to use.
If you are unsure which to use and you’re a relatively new user, then you want to avoid vim (or vi) and pick nano.
Nano works most like a regular text editor in the terminal, and whilst most people will most likely shout at me for not using vim, I don’t think this is a good time to throw you in the deep end, so go ahead and select nano.

Once selected you will be presented with a file that looks like this:

# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use ‘*’ in these fields (for ‘any’).#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron’s system
# daemon’s notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)

#
# m h dom mon dow command

Wow, this might look like double Dutch to you, so let’s explain what it wants us to do.
First of all, all those lines starting with a hash (#) are comments, so they aren’t read by the system and are for your benefit.

Let me explain the structure of a cron command.
Crontab is divided in two parts. The first is the time for something to be run at, the second is what is to be run.
An example we are provided is:

0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/

Note the first 5 fields before the command ‘tar’: 0 5 * * 1
This tells us when it is to be ran.
They are ordered as follows from left to right:

Minute, Hour, Day of the Month, Month, Day of the Week

By entering a number on any of these places, you are entering a value to that time.
By entering a asterisk (*) on any of these places you are leaving that blank.
So looking at our example, it is is stating that it wants the minutes to be 00, hour to be 05, every day of every month on a Monday to be run.
This is unusual especially since the comments state every day.
Either way, it’s clear this must be run at 5am each day.
Let’s look at how I want my script to be ran.

My script must be ran at 10 minutes past midnight or 00:10 each day.
Therefore the number sequence should be: 10 0 * * *
If I only wanted it to run every 13th day of the month it would be:
10 0 13 * *
Or if I only wanted it ran the 13th of July it would be:
10 0 13 7 *

But let’s stick to my original plan of 10 past midnight each day.
Next would be to tell cron what I want to run, in this case it’s my script upgrade.sh.
This uses absolute pathnames and I also want to tell it to use bash, so I would say:
‘bash /home/me/scripts/upgrade.sh’ (without quotes)

So my crontab should look like this:

10 0 * * * bash /home/me/scripts/upgrade.sh

After that, I am done.
You can add more by placing each individual job on a new line.
Once I’m done, I can save the crontab using Ctrl+O and then Ctrl+X to exit.

Then to list all the jobs type ‘crontab -l’, and to remove a job ‘crontab -r’.
If you want to remove a job for a particular user use ‘crontab -r user’ (replace user with username)

See how simple that is?

2. GUI-dify Bash with Zenity

GUI’s make applications a lot more attractive, and Zenity can do that with bash scripts.
You don’t even need to install another application for it. So if your friend uses Ubuntu or another Linux distribution with Bash and is based on Gnome, then he/she could use the GUI application after you sent it.

We are going to use some examples to create a small little application that has a few of these features.
This is the plan:

We want to create an application with bash that will ask for a password, it will then check if it’s the same as in the script, then if it is, we will ask for a favourite colour.
After that we will ask for a favourite quotation, and finally, we will let bash save them all in a nice little file and place it on the desktop.
If the password was incorrect, we will show a warning dialog box.

So let’s begin by opening Gedit.
First we use the shebang (#!/bin/bash)

Our first zenity dialog should ask for a password, so let’s begin with the following command:

password=`zenity –password`

That’s all that zenity requires for a password.
What happens here is that we created the variable password.
Inside that variable in the sideway quotes (above tab key) we put the command zenity –password.
This tells zenity we want a password dialog.
All the information that is typed in the password dialog then get’s saved in the variable password.

We can now use an IF loop to check whether the password is correct or not.
This is definitely not the way to ask for passwords but it is a good way to show how it works.

As you can tell by now we first ask to compare the text in variable password, with ‘password123’.
If that is correct, we create an information dialog with zenity’s ‘–info’ argument and use –text to tell what we want to display.
If it is incorrect, we create an error dialog using –error and use –text to display that it is incorrect.

But we want do other things when the password is correct, so let’s remove the info dialog, and start work here.

Now let’s ask for a favourite colour.
Instead of plain and simply asking, why don’t we use a radio list, where a user can pick one.
Let’s begin.

First what we did was create the variable colour.
then in the sideway quotes (is that the right name?) we told zenity we want a form of –list, and we selected the –radiolist, we want the text displayed to be “Please choose your favourite colour:”.
After this we gave –hide-header, that will ensure you don’t see the column names which we also provided. After that we gave the options available, and set them all to FALSE, meaning that none were selected by default.

Since we don’t need to do anything with this, let’s leave it just as it is for now.

Finally we want to ask for a nice quotation, for this all we want is a text entry dialog.
So we could use:

quote=`zenity –entry –text “Enter your favourite quote:”`

What we did here was select –entry for our type of dialog, and provided the text “Enter your favourite quote”, and all this is saved in the ‘quote’ variable.

Now we get to do some bash behind the scenes, and this gives me a chance to show you one more little feature of bash.

What I want to do is make a file with all this information in and place it on the desktop. But considering everyone has a different username, we need to make some small changes.
First we need to create a variable to place the current username in:

user=`whoami`

Whenever you need to put the result of a command in a variable, you need to use sideways quotes.
The whoami command usually displays the current username, but we are going to use it in a moment so we just want the current username inside the variable ‘user.
Next we are going to make another variable to save us time writing out a text file location like this:

outputfile=/home/$user/Desktop/colours_and_quotes.txt

This is more to save time but notice how we use the variable ‘$user’.
Because we saved the current username in that variable, we know it will always be correct.
Please note you would usually just use $HOME, but this was a good excuse to show you how you can really utilize variables.

The chances are, colours_and_quotes.txt does not yet exist on the desktop, and if we want to write anything to it, it will just give us errors saying it doesn’t exist.
Now would be a good time to create it, so our next command is:

touch $outputfile

Touch creates an empty file by whatever name you gave it, here we used the ‘outputfile’ variable to tell touch where we wanted it placed and by what name.
Now we are ready to send our information.

The >> simply sends the strings to colours_and_quotes.txt.
A single > will mean it will overwrite whatever was already there, which isn’t handy if we have a few lines to send, but >> will just write one line after the other.
What we also did was use the ‘colour’ and ‘quote’ variables inside the string to be sent over. This will mean that whatever choices were made and quotes were typed in, they will be sent nicely to the text file.

We all know how tedious it can be to perform the same long command over and over again.
And sometimes you might not even know how to issue commands or know how they work exactly.
And when this needs to be performed the same way it might just be better if you could make a script specific to your needs.
But you may have other preferences too. Perhaps you need to perform this task at certain times, or perhaps you need to have it performed by someone else who isn’t very confident on the command line.
Luckily enough, Linux has Bash as the main scripting language built in, which is perfectly suited for just such cases.
You could write a Python script, but if it’s basic system maintenance then Bash will get the job done. And because of it’s scripting nature, it means you can write the code needed once, and perform it whenever you want, much like Batch on MS-DOS used to be (remember that?).
But Linux has more tools at your disposal which can all be combined to make your life so much easier, and I will be using all the ones that will be most useful to you.

Take for instance the Cron utility.
Cron is a utility which will run certain programs, scripts or anything for that matter, at certain intervals, in a way that is simple but very powerful.
And when you write a small script to perform a certain task and hand it over to Cron, it will carry that out at the moment you have specified. Whether once a day, once a week or even once an hour. You can forget setting your alarm to perform the task, and just let Linux deal with it.

And thanks to the great efforts of the GNOME team and KDE team, we also have great programs like Zenity and KDialog at our disposal.
These programs allow you to create a nice neat GUI for your bash script depending on which desktop you use (GNOME/Unity using Zenity, KDE using KDialog).
Unlike using Glade in combination with Python for instance, you can issue the GUI building commands directly into your script in an easy to understand way, which means you have one file which produces both the GUI and carries out the command you need.
Very handy for those who don’t feel comfortable with the command line, and if you just want a script to look nice.

In part 1 we will be looking at the absolute beginners steps.
How to write a basic bash script, then spice it up with some user input, and finally make it smart with some conditional for, while and if loops.
And at the end we will see how we can use that to automate a task. In our example we will make a 4 line script (or 1 line if you want to use semi-colons) to batch convert WAV files to MP3s.

But let’s start at the beginning, and write a couple of small bash scripts.

1. Writing a small Bash script

Bash scripts can be as complicated as you make them, but also be extremely simple.
And if you are comfortable working in the terminal, can navigate through the filesystem using the terminal, and issue commands there, you already know a lot of the basics. The simple commands ‘cd’, ‘rm’, ‘mkdir’, ‘touch’, and ‘ls’ are all bash commands, so you can use them inside your script as if you were on the command line.
But there may be some commands that you rarely use whilst working on the command line which you might require in a script.
Such examples may include ‘echo’ for displaying information, variables, and ‘read’ to take input.
As is tradition, we will begin with a simple Hello World script.
All that this script will do is clear the screen and show the text ‘Hello World’

So start by opening a text editor like Gedit and copy the following text there, once pasted, save it in your home directory under the name ‘hello_world.sh’:

#!/bin/bash

# This will display Hello World

clear
echo “Hello World!”

Then, simply open a terminal and navigate to the directory in which you saved this script, in our case we should be in that directory already. Then issue the command (without the quotes) ‘bash hello_world.sh’

See what happened? The screen cleared and it displayed ‘Hello World!’ after which the application quit.
So, what did we do exactly?

The first line in this script is known as the shebang (#!/bin/bash).
What this line does is tell where it can find the bash program to run this script in.
This is particularly handy when we forget to give the script a .sh ending and then it can still be run as normal.
The /bin/bash element is the location of bash on the filesystem.

The next line begins with a hash (#) which denotes a comment line.
Anything written after the hash will not be interpreted by bash and is used to leave a comment about what something does.
It’s quite irrelevant here, but in a long script that can be complicated, it is useful to explain what each part does, making it easy to make changes and simply to understand.

The first real command we have issued is the ‘clear’ command.
This command will fill the screen with enough whitespace to appear as if the screen has been ‘cleared’, this makes it much cleaner than a cluttered program.
As with all commands, you can try it out in a terminal outside of a script and it will still do the same job.

Finally the line ‘echo “Hello World!”‘ displays Hello World!
Echo is the command that simply tells the system that the following string (or variable) has to be displayed, and a string can be put in either single or double quotes.
If we replace the word World with You, and save it, it will display ‘Hello You!’.

2. Bash with interactive input and variables

The example above was simple enough, but sometimes we require some input from the user.
For that we require variables, and in the next example the ‘read’ command.
The read command will take user input and store it in a variable.
If you don’t know what that is, imagine a box. You can then take information, and store it in that box. Whenever you reference that box, you take what’s inside it out. That is how variables work, but a variable can only contain one piece of information at a time, make sure to remember that.

In the next example, we transform our Hello World script to instead say hello to whoever is using the script.

#!/bin/bash

# Asking for user name

clear
echo “What is your name? ”
read name
echo “Hello $name!”

Please note there is a space between name? and the double quotes.
If you run this script it will ask for your name and when you have given it, it will say Hello and then your name and an exclamation mark.
For instance if I give my name as Arthur, it will say ‘Hello Arthur!’.

The first line is the shebang as we previously discussed.
After the comment it will once again clear the screen.
Then it will simply display the question ‘What is your name?’, but by having a space behind it, it means that your answer won’t appear right behind the question making it look clearer.
Next we get the command ‘read name’.
What happens here is that the command read knows to take input from the user, and the ‘name’ behind it is the variable. Therefore, the user input gets stored in the variable ‘name’. We can later call upon ‘name’ to get the input.

The next line ‘echo “Hello $name!”‘ does that.
As we discussed earlier, echo displays a string on the screen, but we did something clever here. We first provided Hello as part of the string, but right behind it we put $name. Whenever you call upon a variable you have stored something in, you place a dollar sign in front of it, so the variable ‘name’ get’s called using ‘$name’, or if you used the variable ‘hello’ it would be called upon using ‘$hello’ etc.
What it therefore does is take the information stored in ‘name’ and displays it as part of the string.
Clever isn’t it?

3. Meeting conditions with IF, WHILE and FOR loops.

If you aren’t a programmer, then this bit may have seemed confusing in the past, so I will try my best at explaining what this is.
Within programming and scripting, there is a lot of loops being used.
What these do is check for a certain condition to be met.

The IF loop may for instance ask for your age, and then it checks IF a person is below 18, it will run a certain command, but IF a person is above 18 it will run a different command altogether. ELSE if a person didn’t give an age, well, then a totally different command gets issued.

The WHILE loop checks if a condition is still the same as before. So WHILE something is the same, the same command gets issued, ELSE, it may quit.
This is handy if we want to keep a program running about 5 times. So WHILE we are only on run number 4 we keep going, ELSE we stop.

The FOR loop runs similar to the WHILE loop, but a little more specific at the basic level
For instance, we can specify certain numbers we want the FOR loop to run in, it will then keep going through the loop trying to meet what we specify and stop when it’s done. Hopefully the example for this later will give some clarification to this difficult to explain loop.

Why not use these examples altogether to see how we can use them with our Hello World example script to make it more and more detailed.
This is going to look overwhelming to the previous examples, but don’t worry, all will become clear.

#!/bin/bash

# A more detailed Hello World script

clear
end=0

while [ “$end” -eq 0 ]
do

echo “How old are you? ”
read age

if [ “$age” -gt “17” ]
then
echo “What is your name? ”
read name
for i in `seq 1 $age`
do
echo “Hello $name, you are $1 years old!”
end=1
done
else
echo “You are too young to run this!”
end=1
fi
done

First of all, this is not really the most beautiful of code and things could have been done differently, but, it illustrates the loops perfectly, whilst still being somewhat useful and easier to understand what each bit does.

The first lines are the familiar shebang, comment and clear lines.
But then we get ‘end=0’.
We use this for our example while loop, since we could use this to keep a program running (we aren’t in this example). We place the number 0 in a variable called end for later use.

Now we arrive at our first loop, the WHILE loop.
‘while [ “$end” -eq 0 ]’ looks scarily complicated, but really it isn’t.
let’s first deal with the ‘-eq’ bit.
It is simply short for ‘equal to’, and since we have place the conditions of a loop inside these brackets “[ ]”, it translates to:
While the information stored in variable ‘end’ is the same as 0.
So the script will keep checking to see if indeed ‘end’ is still a 0.
And then the next line states simply ‘do’ to finish of our command.
So, while ‘end’ is a 0, do….

The next line is just a printed line that asks for your age.
And right below that, we are asking for user input and storing that in the variable ‘age’.
Notice how inside a loop, we leave a gap of space (just press tab), to make it easier to read.

Now we arrive at our next loop, this time the IF loop.
We are now going to see whether a condition is met or not.
‘if [ “$age” -gt “17” ]’
As before, let’s first look at -gt.
This simply means ‘greater than’, or bigger than.
As I mentioned before, we put the conditions that have to be met inside the brackets and we quote both the variable to match and what to match it to in quotes.
Then it translates to:
if the number we stored in ‘age’ is bigger than the number 17.
And the next line states ‘then’, to tell what is to happen.
So as you can see, it simply checks the number that we type in and checks to see if it is bigger than 17, if that is the case, then we go to the next bit.
But beware, greater than, does not mean including a number. For instance if you wanted to check if it was less than (smaller than) with -lt on 17, then it would not include 17, it would mean 16 and below. To include 17 you would then use, less than and equal too, in bash that would be -le (Less and Equal).

Inside that loop if the condition was met we arrive at our next part.
We first display the question of your name on the screen. Then, on the next line, we take the user input and place it in the variable ‘name’.
So far so good.
But now we arrive at our final loop, the difficult to explain FOR loop.

for i in `seq 1 $age`
Looks intimidating doesn’t it? And where did that ‘i’ come from.
Well it’s actually fairly straight forward.
The ‘i’ is a temporary variable we are going to use (could be anything but ‘i’ tends to be the traditional variable to use).
Then the seq is short for sequence. What For loops do is run through a sequence until the conditions no longer apply.
After having stated ‘seq’ we give our starting point at which to loop, in our case: 1.
After that we give our end number at which to stop, in our case we gave the variable ‘age’.
All this inside quotes (the ones on the key above the tab key, not regular quotes).
Let me replace the variable so you can see what it does.
Say we gave our age as 19.
What it then really says is ‘for i in `seq 1 19`’
And if we translate that, it means, that it will run in a sequence from 1 to 19, every time using the variable ‘i’, which becomes clear in a moment.
After the do command, you see ‘echo “Hello $name, you are $i years old!”‘

As you can see, it displays ‘Hello’ and the name given, after that it displays ‘you are … years old!’.
Remember how we gave the variable ‘i’ to the for loop?
What it now does is it begins with giving variable ‘i’ the value of 1 (since that’s where we said we want our sequence to begin), it then runs through this loop and then displays ‘you are 1 years old!’, then it goes back to the top and reaches number 2 in the sequence, and changes variable ‘i’ to 2, and then displays ‘you are 2 years old!’.
This will happen all the way until it reaches the last number in the sequence. In our case it’s in a variable, so whatever age we gave in. After that it stops. Therefore, you will see a fair few lines with ‘You are … years old!’ each line 1 year up.
We also added ‘end=1’.
Remember right at the beginning that we gave ‘end’ the value of 0? And how we told the while loop to keep running this entire program as long as ‘end’ was equal to 0?
Well, at this point the variable is changed to 1, so the while loop condition is no longer met, and the program is allowed to quit.

Since the For loop is done, we have to close it off, we do this by using the ‘done’ command.
Now you see ‘else’, if you look carefully at the structure, you will notice it is in the same line vertically as the beginning of our IF loop, this means that the ELSE condition is part of the IF loop.
Inside of ‘else’ we simply display that you are too young to run this.
We knew this because we told the IF loop to check if the variable ‘age’ was greater than 17.
And the ELSE statement acts when that condition isn’t met (in this case when ‘age’ is smaller than or equal to 17).
After that, it changes the ‘end’ variable to a 1 to allow the while loop to finish and stop our program.

If you took out all the ‘end=1’ parts, then the program would keep running.
At the end of the IF loop, we put ‘fi’ to end the loop, and at the end of the while loop, we use ‘done’ to close it off.

4. Using loops with commands

But this is all about automating tasks, not hello worlds.
We can use these loops to automate a task however, in little ingenious ways.
For instance, have you ever had a .wav file that you wanted to change to an MP3 file?
That’s all fair and well, but what if you had 100’s of them?
The annoying bit isn’t only the manual conversion, but you have stupid new names like 1.mp3, 2.mp3 3.mp3 etc.
What if you wanted to batch convert the whole lot, and keep their original names while you were at it?
Well, why not use the FOR loop for this?!

Say you have the command ffmpeg -b 192k -i abc.wav abc.mp3 which converts the abc.wav to abc.mp3.
Handy right?
We can make it a batch conversion command using a for loop.

for i in *.wav
do
ffmpeg -b 192k -i “$i” “${i%.wav}.mp3”
done

Instead of giving a number for a sequence in a for loop, what we did is say *.wav.
The asterisk (*) means anything or all. So in this case it means any file ending in .wav.
So what we are doing is we are telling the script to run through all files that end in .wav.
The first file it encounters automatically gets placed in variable ‘i’.
Then it runs the ffmpeg command on it, and if you replace all the variables ‘i’ with what is contained in it, you will get something like the following, if your file was abc.wav:

ffmpeg -b 192k -i abc.wav abc.mp3

You might be confused by the whole ‘${i%.wav}.mp3’ thing.
This bit basically removes the .wav bit and replaces it with .mp3, so the name stays in tact but instead it’s an mp3 file.
You could also put it all in one line. Just place a semi-colon (;) behind the end of every command.
This one would become: for i in *.wav; do; ffmpeg -b 192k -i “$i” “${i%.wav}.mp3”; done

Try some out for yourself

Why not try some out for yourself
In part 2 we will be looking at introducing Cron.
We will try and automate our scripts even further by letting the system take care of them. Write it once, never need to run it again by hand will be the motto.

I am rather excited about writing this one, especially with the passion I have for this game.

Paradox Interactive, the company behind grand-strategy games such as Europa Universalis III (and soon IV), Victoria II and Hearts of Iron III have made their debut on Linux.

For those who don’t know what grand-strategy involves or what makes Paradox a company worth noting, let me begin by explaining a little bit about their games before I continue.
The Strategy genre in gaming is a very broad one, and the term is very vague. Spanning from real-time strategy like Age of Empires franchise, to turn-based strategy like the Total War series and the Civilization series.
The majority of Paradox games and Crusader Kings II included falls something along the lines of the Total War series.
The idea is that you are a king of a nation and you effectively rule every aspect of the kingdom.
But here is where the grand-strategy comes in.
Unlike Total War, Crusader Kings II does not really have a set goal, other than survive that is.
Sure it has a scoring system, but that’s more for those who find such a thing important.

You rule your kingdom between 1066 and the 1300’s (that is if you have no add-ons), and your role includes choosing the people in your court, arranging marriages and betrothals, waging war, making peace, set taxes, change laws, keeping your subjects happy, keeping the dukes and counts happy.
But the real objective of this game is to keep your line alive.
You start with a king of your choosing, whether you pick king William the conqueror of England, or the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, it is up to you. But you can also go more low-profile and become a simple duke of a small region.
Then you marry, have children and rule.
However, make sure you keep having children to take over your kingdom or region when you pass to the realm of the dead, because if your direct line dies out, it’s game over.

Sound simple?

Not really, children could contract diseases and die early, or in my case, your 24 year old heir dies months before your king dies, leaving your 1 year old grandson to take over. And as you can imagine, nobles find that a nice opportunity to really stir up trouble.
And don’t think that brothers and cousins are nice either. They are more than happy to kill you and take over the crown.
And finally, make sure you think carefully about who you pick to give titles to, their descendants might make you regret that move 100 years later.

I wish I could write more about this but it will simply take up way too much time, but if you are the type of person who would love to be king, this is a game for you, but it’s definately not simple!

Now, let’s get to the point.

Paradox Interactive decided to be the first (major 3rd party) company to embrace Linux and release one of their best games for Linux.
They have also released all their current add-ons and expansions for the Linux version, and their up and coming ‘The Old Gods’ expansion pack will be released the same time as on Windows.
But, they have also announced that the up and coming title ‘Europa Universalis IV’ will also be released for Linux too.

Currently the game is available from Steam for $40.
But at the time of writing this article, there is a 50% off sale on this game directly from the Paradox site, for only $20.
The link for this is: http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/crusader-kings-ii#buy_game-tab
You will receive a Steam code when you purchase it, so all the usual Steam goodness is included.

Now finally, something worth noting is that I also have the Windows version of this game which I have ran through Wine for some time.
But unlike a lot of other games, this game is unbelievably smooth compared to it’s Wine equivalent.

If you have some issues with speed with this game, please go to your ‘Documents’ directory, navigate to the Paradox Interactive and then Crusader Kings II folder, and then open up the settings.txt file in Gedit (or vim or whatever you prefer) and turn off trees, this will help most definately.

I hope you enjoy the game as much as I do and why not look me up on Steam.
Feel free to add me: ViaNocturna85

If you are getting a little bored by the ‘Steam posts’ lately, please do let me know, but I thought it would be nice to be ahead of the game.

If you are one of those people who is super-excited about Steam natively on Linux, then you will soon run out of excitement when you realise that most games, and the really popular ones, are not yet available for us Linux users.
So how cool would it be if we could play Windows games through Steam on Linux so you have all those features of Steam whilst playing those games, and having your Steam friends know that you are playing those games?

As you can imagine, we will be using Wine for this to be possible, and in particular: PlayOnLinux, when you are done you should have something like this:

As the screenshot above shows, here I have Europa Universalis III inside the native Steam client. This obviously isn’t an official Steam game, therefore it is limited. However, when you play the game, you still have the Steam features

And when you are playing this Wine game, it does show up in chat exactly what you are playing:

Note how it states that I am playing the non-Steam game Europa Universalis III.

Funny enough, this isn’t difficult to do, and has many advantages.
Rather than having your games scattered around, you can have all your games, Linux or Windows inside one client: Steam.
So let’s look how I did it.

For ease and convenience, I used PlayOnLinux.
This is a pretty Wine GUI and allows you to make seperate Wine bottles and install games from a list or manually with minimal effort. For more information on PlayOnLinux, have a look at another post as I won’t be covering that here.

If you have PlayOnLinux installed and have some games running on it, you are ready to go. I do recommend having a few games (or just one) installed through PlayOnLinux before you begin.

Begin by creating a directory in your home folder which I am calling ‘.POLGames’.
I am using the .(dot) in front of the folder name to keep it hidden and keep my home directory clean.

Next, you will want to keep that folder open, then fire up PlayOnLinux.
Select the game you want to add to Steam and click on ‘Create a shortcut’ on the right-hand panel.
This should have created a shortcut to that game on your Desktop.

Right-click on the shortcut and click on ‘Properties’ and then you should see ‘Command’ under the name, and description. This should be filled in by a line typically starting with ‘/usr/share/playonlinux –run …’.
Select that entire line and copy it (Ctrl+C) as we will need this later.
Then close that window and drag the shortcut to the directory we created, in my example ‘.POLGames’.

Now open Steam for Linux.

Click on ‘Library’ and at the bottom click on ‘+ ADD A GAME’ and then ‘Add a Non-Steam Game’.

You should have a window open which takes a moment to populate.
When it is done, look through this list and see if the game is listed and add it, if it is not listed, don’t worry, we will add it manually.

Click on ‘Browse’ and go to ‘/home/USERNAME/.POLGames/’ (if you used .POLGames, otherwise whatever you called the directory). You can move up a directory by clicking on the icon of a folder and an up arrow at the top.

You should find all the .desktop files of games you have added there earlier from the created shortcuts you placed in there earlier.

Select the game you want to add and click ‘Open’.

If all went well, then you should have it at the bottom of your games list.
If the name is incorrect, you can change it in a minute.

Next we need to change the run command since it will just open PlayOnLinux if you click ‘Play’.

Now right-click the game you added to the list in Steam and select ‘Properties’.
This should open the ‘shortcut’ menu.

Here you should see a button named ‘CHOOSE ICON…’, the name of the game, ‘Target’, ‘Start In…’ and a button named ‘CHANGE…’.
If the name of the game was incorrect, change it in the text-box underneath ‘CHOOSE ICON…’.
Now then, underneath target you need to remove what is in that box and replace it with the line we copied earlier from the PlayOnLinux shortcut command.
We can leave the rest alone, just click ‘CLOSE’.

Now you can click ‘PLAY’ and you are able to play the Windows game inside Steam.

I am slightly behind with this news article, but if you weren’t yet aware let me explain about the news.

As you might be aware, Valve has begun their work on a Linux client for the popular game service Steam.
And not too long ago they were looking for experienced Linux users for their closed beta.
I signed up like thousands of others but did not make the cut.

The beta started a few days ago and some users on Reddit have already breached it.

This breach allows non-beta accounts to access the Steam client and use it.
BUT, before you get too excited, Valve already discovered this breach and it’s not much use anymore.
You are able to use this client to run games you already have installed on your system using the ‘Add non-Steam Games’ feature. But games on Steam for Linux are unavailable for those who do not have a non-beta account.

The question has become whether this will have repercussions or not.
Will this breach make Valve think again about Linux and it’s users?
My personal opinion is that this will make no change to their idea of Linux users at all.
The reason for this is that anyone who signed up for the beta will have been asked how many years experience they have with Linux, and those with longer experience had more of a chance to gain access. Also, those attending Ubuntu Developer Summit gained automatic entry.
Therefore, for Valve to be annoyed by this seems illogical, after all, any Linux user with more than 7 years Linux experience will be a hacker.

Then the question becomes, was this a publicity stunt?
Yes, this question has also come up, and I think it has already been answered.
I don’t think it is, purely because they closed this loophole very quickly and if it was a publicity stunt, they would have allowed it to be used, or at least by a few more people.

But, regardless of the limited functionality for non-beta users, let’s have a look at what to expect and what is already available.

Finally we can have our own Steam icon on the panel as expected, which integrates perfectly with Ubuntu, allowing you to access your friends list, store, library and more by a right-click on the icon. Unfortunately I couldn’t show you the quick-list, but here you see the icon in full glory on the bar.

Once you click it however, you get an error because you are not a beta user (at the bottom you will find the work around) as you can see below.

After you run the command from the terminal to gain access you will find it in it’s full beauty.
This is exactly the same as you can see in the Windows client.

What you will notice is in the top right corner you see ‘Big Picture’.
This allows you to switch to a full-screen mode which is similar to what you expect from a console version or a media center like XBMC or the like.
It was a little laggy at loading (Intel integrated graphics) but once you get to the main screen it was very responsive and fluid.
This feature is absolutely gorgeous and I can imagine many will use it a lot.

As part of the work around it was initially possible to install games like Team Fortress 2 using a terminal command. However, whilst it begins installing, it will stop with an error about the servers being busy.
I suspect that this is a polite way of Valve telling the hackers they won’t get very far.

All in all, this is not going to allow you to download and install Games.
However, it is a nice glimpse into what we can expect from Valve very soon.
And if (like me) you want your games that you already own organised neatly, then you will find some use in Steam now, as you are able to play games you have added manually.

To install Steam Beta, get access, and attempt to install TF2 yourself:

Firstly open up a terminal and you can install the client by using these commands:

Since there seems to be some misinformation, misunderstanding and general confusion about viruses on Linux, I hope to be able to explain a few things.

As we all know, a virus is a program that has malicious intent.
There are many forms in which they appear, but there is not reason for me to explain the ins and outs of virii, so let’s crack on with the issue at hand.

I will be looking at the difference between the Windows OS and Linux OS (specifically Ubuntu). I would use Mac OSX too, but eventhough it’s a Unix operating system, I have not used it enough to be able to speak about it confidently.

Let me start off by dispelling one common held belief.

It’s often said that the reason for a lack in viruses on Linux is because such a small amount of users worldwide use Linux, it is better for virus programmers to target Windows than it is Linux.

Every part of this statement is false.
If you are a clever virus programmer, you are better off targeting Linux than you would be Windows.
Windows is a Desktop operating system which could render home users and businesses useless.
Whilst this seems a great idea, it’s not very clever.
Since the majority of worldwide servers run a Linux distrobution, targeting them would be far more interesting, since they are connected more vitally to others than any home computer or single business.
For instance, if you were to target a virus to the server of a major internet company, instead of it irritating the people in head office, you are now shutting the company down.

But Linux isn’t just servers and a few home computers. There is the Android OS, many car computers, robots and even space systems are running Linux.
In fact, I actually believe more people on this planet use Linux than any other OS.
Actually, if you are anti-Linux, I think you most likely are using Linux many times a day.

So with that myth dealt with let’s actually look at the real issue.

Let us look at the system structure on a Windows OS and it’s security, or lack of.
And I’m not just talking about anti-virus here by the way.

At it’s core, the file structure begins at the hard drive on which the OS is installed, this is usually C:
For comparison purposes, we will call this point ‘root’. Since everything starts from this point, root is possibly the best word for it.

From root, you typically find (on a 32bit system) the Windows folder, Program Files folder, Users folder, and perhaps some others.

When you enter the Windows folder, and head on over to the System32 folder, you will find a lot of files.
These files are the core of a Windows system.
If you have ever encountered the annoying Blue Screen of Death or unrecoverable system crashes, the most likely place where things have gone wrong is in this folder.

Now simply open a file which is vital to the system with Notepad, and change something and save it, or delete a few files (by the way this is for illustrative purposes, DO NOT DO THIS, I will not be held responsible) and congratulations, you have just broken Windows.
Simple isn’t it?

Let me just say before I get told how wrong I am, that I am building this on Windows XP and perhaps Vista. I have never used Windows 7, and Vista was extremely brief, so I expect things to have changed.

What this comes down to is simple security.

It’s all well having anti-viruses but if your system is so easy to tamper with, it’s like lying awake at night with a baseball bat in case burglars come in whilst leaving your front door open. You are more or less prolonging the inevitable.

Now let us look at Linux.

Linux begins at it’s root, actually known as root.
Root in Linux is not given a letter like in Windows, rather it’s symbol is a forward slash (/).
From this point, all the file structure starts.
Linux does not like to throw every important file in one general folder.
Every type of folder holds it’s specific type of file.
For instance, all the configuration files are held in /etc, and /usr hold application files.

However, it gets a little more complicated than that.

For those folders you always need an administration password.

There is also a folder in the root directory called /home.
Within this folder you will find folders named after the different users of the computer.
Going into these folders will hold all the personal files such as pictures, music, videos, etc etc.
But typically, hidden away are separate copies of configuration files and applications.
These do not require a password.

This serves multiple purposes.
Firstly, if for an application such as Emesene (a Linux Windows Live Messenger application) you have individual configuration files within your own home folder, it means that each person has their own login name shown, and other users aren’t shown.
Secondly, if something does not require the use of important administrative programs, then it would make more sense to have it in the home folder.

So let’s now look at how viruses can be made and how easy with each OS.
Technically speaking, if I wanted to just cause damage and nothing else, all I would need to do for Windows is to create an application that deletes files in the Windows folder.
Then I would have achieved my goal and usually without problems in security.

With Linux it’s a different story.
If I wanted to create damage, I would first have to think of where the damage has to be done.
If I simply wanted to damage users files, then I could write a script that deletes things in the users directory because that requires no administrator passwords.
However, it would make no change to the OS which would still run just as well.

If I wanted to damage the system and render it useless, then I rely on skill and the user being somewhat naive.

Firstly, I could write a script that would empty the harddrive.
Funnily, if you are running Linux, whilst still using it, you could empty the harddrive, although most Linux distributions no longer allow you to run the script needed, which for obvious reasons I’m not going to supply.

The issue with this is no matter whether you create a cunning app, or a script, it requires administration rights. Which in debian based systems is sudo and more server style OS’s as su.
They will then be asked for their password.

Now if someone is naive and hasn’t checked the code and just runs it, of course it will do damage.
But usually someone will have checked the code and warned others.
If they aren’t naive they won’t run it.

Also an added bonus that Linux has is their ideals for OpenSource.
Most software is written using scripts (like Bash) or languages (like Python) which most times have the sourcecode easily obtainable and open to scrutiny.
Meaning that the chances in passing a virus in even complex applications is very very small.

But you might also be wondering how anti-viruses work.
Even though that is slightly irrelevant to this article, I do want to explain.

Anti-virus software is not all magical with it’s ability to know what a program does and therefore stop it in it’s track.
In fact, it works totally different than that.

If you have anti-virus software you will have noticed that you hear that a database has been updated, or is not up to date.
What happens is the people who work for companies like Norton, and AVG, find out there is a new virus on the loose.
They scrutinize a copy of this virus and how it reacts.
Then they record it’s patterns in a database which is sent to you.
If you catch that virus it checks the database to see if it matches any in the database and then stops it.
So this also means that if you are the first person to get the newest most evil virus ever, your in trouble since it isn’t in the database.

Now there are many anti-virus software on the market for Windows, but only a couple for Linux.
Most of the basic reasons why I have outlined.

But there is also the point of arrival for the different OS’s.

Windows users are used to getting their software from a website, where, if we are honest, anybody could have created it for whatever purpose and even under different guises.

Linux doesn’t approach software this way.
Linux uses package management. Ubuntu uses the Ubuntu Software Centre, and Debian uses Synaptic for example.
These package managers are thoroughly checked so that you know that whatever software you download is safe.
Sometimes you download software from websites but this isn’t always encouraged, and usually someone warns you if it’s not safe.

Now these are not all the reasons for the reason why Linux viruses are rare, for they do exist.
But they are the most basic reasons.

My advice:
If you cannot find a piece of software you are after in the software centre or Synaptic, and have to download from a website.
First ensure it is safe by seeing what others have to say about it.
If someone promotes a script (as I have for Paltalk and Lotro) first see what others have said about it, and then if you have not enough information, read through the code, or have someone else read through it, to ensure that it’s safe to use.
And obviously, if a script or program asks you for your password, don’t just jump in and give it, find out why it needs it.

A few years ago a picture was leaked from a Microsoft course for businesses selling computers.
The picture showed a slideshow regarding Linux. It gave mythological ‘facts’ about the limitations of Linux compared to Windows.
Mentions of no MP3 player compatibility, no DVD support and Word documents support, there was also the lack of games.

Nowadays we know that MP3 players work perfect and DVD support is most often out of the box.
But gaming seems to still be a reason for many people to not use Linux.

I want to introduce those new to Linux to the choices they have for gaming on Linux.
It’s actually a lot easier than you may think.

So, let’s see what options we have!

Native Linux Games

By native we mean games that were made for Linux.
These usually come in the form of .deb files (or .rpm if your using a RedHat based system) a .bin file or a .run file.
The good side to this is that there are no difficult steps to follow, and you know they run optimally on Linux.

The downside to native Linux games are…well…the real popular games are mostly absent in this list.
But really, that depends on what type of person you are.
I have to admit, I play games neither for their graphics, nor their popularity.
If a game has a great story, or is just great fun to play, then I’m very interested.

If you are a person who absolutely loves first person shooters. Then Linux is heaven for you. As the amount of FPS in the Software Center and websites for Linux is rediculous.
But, if you are a person who wants to keep up with the latest trends in games, then you will find Linux somewhat lacking.
But, there are other options for you.

Wine

Wine stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator.
And what it does not do (since so many people seem to think this), is to emulate Windows a bit like VirtualBox or VMWare.
What it does is convert the signals it gets from programs or games to native Linux equivalents.
This makes sense, since many report that many programs and games designed for Windows run better through Wine. This would not happen if it was an emulator since it would require the Windows system resources which run on top of the Linux ones, making it do more than Windows alone, and therefore run slower.

However, Wine runs Windows apps on Linux, that’s the point.
But before you get all excited, this does not mean that whatever you throw at it will work.
There are a few programs and apps that simply do not work.
Luckily for you, Wine has come a long way since it’s beginnings and there is a far greater chance in something working, than not working.

The upside to Wine is that it’s free, works for games and programs alike and has a fantastic community behind it.
They have an AppDB(Database) which means you can search for a program or game on there to see if it works well or not.

The downside to Wine is that it’s not for the faint hearted.
Whilst it’s not rocket science and if your quite comfortable on Linux it’s not too difficult to use, for new beginners it’s quite difficult.
Also, it’s fairly bare boned.
Especially with games you will find that you need to install extra components such as DirectX in order to get games to work.

Crossover Games (Non-free)

If you are willing to pay money to get games to work with minimal trouble and some commercial support for when it’s not working, then maybe Crossover Games is something worth considering.
Crossover Games is an application built on top of Wine.
It allows you to select a game from a list within the application (not all games are listed) and follow three small steps and it will set up the game with the correct version of Wine, all necessary drivers or additional programs it needs, and without needing to grab headache tablets your game will be set up ready for you to play.
You can also visit their site (all links at the bottom of this post) and if you find a game you want to install, there is a possibility you only have to click on a button on the page and it will install it for you. It couldn’t be easier.

The upside to Crossover Games is the ease with which you can get games to install and work. You don’t need to worry about using Wine, installing extra components since it’s all done for you. You also get great support, and because you pay, it’s like any commercial support, it is answered as quickly as possible.

The downside to Crossover Games is that it costs money. Although there is a demo available, the fact that it’s based on Wine (which is free) and you basically pay to ease it’s use, makes you want to think again. Don’t get me wrong, support is good, and I have used it happily for sometime, but if you already paid for the game, you might not want to pay for having to play it.

PlayOnLinux

PlayOnLinux is like Crossover Games in it’s aim, except it is built by a community rather than a company, it doesn’t have commercial support and it’s free.
PlayOnLinux is also built on top of Wine, and makes installing games a breeze.
You select a game from the list, and it will install the correct version of Wine, necessary drivers and components and makes it ready for you so you can just play the game rather than trying to get it to work.
Sometimes you will have a game that isn’t listed, and if you find it works on Wine through their AppDB, you also have the option to install it manually.

The upside of PlayOnLinux is the ease with which you can install games, and it’s great community support. The list of games is big and always growing with the latest games on the list. I also find an upside that you can remove the shortcuts on your Desktop if you like since it makes a nice list of the games you have installed available when you open PlayOnLinux, and you can just click on one and then click on Play to start the game.

The downside to PlayOnLinux is it’s support. Some installers are not always clear or sometimes outdated. However 99% of the times it works perfectly.

My recommended choice:

Since native Linux games are obviously the best choice, I’m going to exclude that from my choice as it would always be number one.

Out of the remaining three my choice would be:

PlayOnLinux

I have found myself using PlayOnLinux for all Windows games that work.
If a game is not in the list, I install it using PlayOnLinux manually just for organisation.
When a game is listed it’s a case of Next Next Next Finish and you can’t argue with that.
Whether you play World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Call of Duty series, Fifa or anything else, you will find PlayOnLinux perfect!

Regarding non-listed games:
If you have a game and it’s not in the list, don’t dispair. Go to the Wine AppDB in the link at the bottom and check whether it works, and on which version of Wine.
Then using PlayOnLinux in the games list at the bottom click on the link for non-listed programs and set up a new prefix (a prefix prevents one messed up app from messing up others), select the version of Wine to use, what extra components you need and then install the game.

Please note that the version of PlayOnLinux in the Ubuntu Software Center is almost always out of date, so please use the link at the bottom to use the newest version.

I have received a lot of comments about people who were not able to install Lotro on their machine.

In order to make this as easy as possible, I have written a small script which will automate the entire process for you.
Please note that you are pretty much a guinea pig since I already had LotRO installed, I wasn’t able to completely test the script. I have ran it without errors, but it was more overwriting my existing install.

Please feel free to read through the script before you use it (can’t be too safe) but please don’t complain about how ugly the code is, it hurts my feelings.

Also, I am not able fix problems with this script, it just automates the install, but I will add some common problems at the bottom of this page, if you encounter any problems, they may help out.
If you have a problem I haven’t covered, then feel free to comment.

Then download the my script from https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4330555/lotroInstall.sh and place it in the SAME directory as the Lotro Windows installer.
The Lotro Windows installer must be unzipped and then make sure the script is in the same directory as the unzipped files.

Open a terminal and navigate to the directory in which these files are placed (E.g. if the unzipped files and the script is placed in a LOTRO folder inside the Downloads folder you would type ‘cd ~/Downloads/LOTRO’)
Then type ‘sh lotroInstall.sh’ and hit enter, then follow the instructions.

Possible issues

If you get the error ‘hardware texture compression support was not detected’, then this is a graphics card issue. This can be fixed by opening a terminal and typing ‘sudo apt-get install driconf’. After that, open driconf, click on the Image Quality tab and change the ‘Enable S3TC texture…’ setting to ‘Yes’.
After that it should load.

If you have a black screen but hear the music, or when you get to the character screen it all goes black:
Then your graphics settings are set too high.
This can be resolved like this (Although tedious):
First open Regedit by typing ‘regedit’ in a terminal and hitting enter.
Then go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Wine > Direct3D (if it doesn’t exist, create it).
Create or change the key ‘DirectDrawRenderer’ to ‘gdi’.
Then go to a folder called ‘The Lord of the Rings Online’ inside your home folder. Not the one inside the .wine folder.
If you are unable to locate the folder, then search your home folder for a file named ‘UserPreferences.ini’.
Once you have located this, open it with your favourite text editor.
At the bottom of this file are the graphics options. Find all the options there that are set to ‘High’ and change them to ‘Low’.
Also change options like bloom and lighting to ‘Off’.
Save the file and try and login to LotRO using pyLotro and see if you still have this issue.

This page is outdated, although still relevant, an install script is available. Just look for the post on this site for the script.

About The lord of the Rings Online

Out of all the MMO’s out there, there is one that stands out in my opinion.
Lord of the Rings Online is a beautiful MMO based on the works by J. R. R. Tolkien, and not based on the films by Jackson.

What makes this stand out more than the others is it’s emphasis on roleplay.
Now don’t worry if your not a fan of roleplaying, since the game is built with features that make it perfect for roleplaying, it certainly isn’t designed for just that.

In the past Turbine (the company behind the game) had shared this game with Codemasters. Where Turbine concentrated on the American servers, and Codemasters on the European. The game had the usual pay per month subscription and everything you expect from a game of this kind.

Fast forward to now and Codemasters are no longer a part of this venture.
Also, all servers are merged into a long list of worldwide servers meaning you are able to play alongside Americans if you are European and the other way around too.

The pay per month subscription has now been altered to a Play For Free subscription.
This means that you are able to play for nothing and still have access to everything(however, with sacrifices which I will get to).
If you so wish you can get a VIP account, this means that you pay per month or per few months and have no limits to what you do.

In order to make money, there are some restrictions to the free user account, however, in my opinion they have been done perfectly.
There are a few MMO’s out there with a free play model where you can purchase additional elements. However, in my experience they have led to unfair advantages to those who put their hands in their pockets. An example of this is for instance where certain weapons can only be purchased or special buffs meaning that you can never be as good as your paying friend.

Lord of the Rings Online does not work like this.
Their system uses Turbine Points. This is seen as a currency system whilst within the game, not being a part of the game as it is only used for the Lord of the Rings Online store.
There are however no unfair advantages.
Every player will earn Turbine Points, whether playing totally for free, or paying.
Everytime you have completed certain deeds you will earn Turbine Points, for fairly easy ones you gain 5, for more difficult ones you gain 10 etc.
With these points you can purchase horses, outfits, accelerators(in order to gain XP faster for a certain amount of time for instance) and extra storage.
If you are a saver, and don’t use your Turbine Points whenever you get them, it is even possible to buy the expansion packs with TP.

I have also mentioned the roleplaying capabilities of this game, but I will now outline those for roleplaying fans out there.

Emotes are an essential part of the game whether roleplaying or not. And there are many included, from laughing, to crying, to fainting and clapping.
But sometimes you may want to emote something that simply is not there. Well they even have that covered.
Let’s say I want look shady around a room of Dwarves. Well, in the chat window I simply start with ‘/emote’ (no quotes) followed by my action. Eg. ‘/emote looks shadily around the room filled with Dwarves’, this will then result in that specific emote being sent.

But what about music?
Everyone within the game can play music.
You just purchase an instrument (with the real in-game currency, either copper, silver, or gold) for a tiny amount of money and in the chat window type ‘/music’ and it turns your number keys at the top of your keyboard into music notes allowing you to play a tune.
However, if you are musically disabled like me, then you probably don’t want to hurt anyone’s eardrums. Well, there is even a way for you to play music you can’t really play.
Simply go to http://www.thefatlute.com/ which has a huge selection of music for the game, download your favourite track in an ABC format and then drop it in the ‘My Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/Music’ folder.
Then in the chat window first type ‘/music’ and then ‘/play <abc file name>’ and it plays that tune for you.

Looking good is also a major part of the game. It’s not all about having the strongest armour.
If you are going to walk around, at least walk around in style.
Cosmetic outfits are therefore a big part of the game, allowing you to customize your look.

And what’s more, cosmetic outfits stand alone from your armour, allowing you to hide your armour from view whilst showing your cosmetic outfit.
This means you look amazing whilst still being strong.
And if you buy a cape that looks great but isn’t your favourite colour, you can buy some dye in the colour you like and transform it.

You can also smoke and drink to your hearts content, but be careful, you can get drunk and it makes walking difficult.

Another element that makes this game so enjoyable is that there is always something happening. Festivals, concerts, everything to be social when you don’t want to be crafting or fighting.

Crafting I won’t go into much detail as most MMO’s have this ability.
You can get a crafting skill that is made up of three different directions.
Two of those you can just do entirely by yourself, but the last you will require someone’s help for.
For instance, I am able to mine for copper, silver, iron ore, gold or whichever, then smelt them into the right substance, and then create armour out of it.
However, my last of these vocations is Tailoring. The problem is that the needed provisions aren’t able to be collected with my vocations. So in order to tailor, I must ask someone to provide me the provisions.

All in all, this is a great game for both gaming and being social.

Give it a shot.

The system requirements are a little strange. I have had a few people who weren’t close to the requirements but encountered no problems playing this game.
But here they are anyway:

2)After it has been downloaded, don’t install it yet. We first need to have everything needed to install it. Open up a terminal and type in the following:
‘sudo apt-get install wine1.3’ without quotes and hit enter

After you have done this, keep the terminal open and type the following(press Enter after each line):

This will install the VC++ libraries which can be installed in the terminal with this command:

./winetricks vcrun2008

3) First unzip the earlier downloaded EXE file (I am here assuming it’s installed in a folder called lotro in the Downloads folder). I recommend the terminal for this. To do that, open a terminal and type the following, pressing Enter after each line:

5) Either using the Dash or menu find Lord of The Rings Online (pylotro) and open this, you will most likely find it does nothing at the moment.

6)On the top click on Tools, then Options.
A new window will appear, you should see ‘Game Directory’ which is probably empty, with a button and three dots in there. Click on that button.
First hit Ctrl+H to also display hidden files (those with a dot in front of their names) and go to the following directory:

.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Turbine/The Lord of the Rings Online

Then hit open until you are there, and save.
The program should refresh and you should have a server list, language etc.

What you could now do, is right-click on the icon in the Unity Launch Bar and click ‘Lock to Launcher’

7) It is all set up now, but you will need to update it the first time it’s installed. To do this, have the launcher window open, click Tools at the top, then Patch.
Then when the new window has opened click on Start.
***NOTE*** There is possibility that you see a list of errors, ignore this, it does not affect the updates. You should also see a list of dots begin to appear, this shows it’s updating.

After you see ‘***FINISHED***’, then you are ready. You can make a new account at http://www.lotro.com or if you already have one, log in.

Extra notes:

I encountered two minor problems, both of which are easily fixed.

a) If you notice that when loading, your game displays a gray background and little squares, then you do not have the loading backgrounds.
I have taken my backgrounds and put them in a tar file which can be downloaded here: http://db.tt/OE9hvgAt

Simply extract the contents of that tar file to ‘.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Turbine/The Lord of the Rings Online/raw/en/logo

After that, you should have proper loading screens.

b) My character was just black.
If you have this, it means your graphics card isn’t totally dealing with the graphics, inside the game set the game to low graphics and it should be good again.

c) Adding ABC files – If you have downloaded ABC files, add a folder inside ‘.wine/drive_c/users/<YOURNAME>/My Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online’ called ‘Music’ and drop the ABC files in there. Then you can play them in game

d) When you start the game you see ‘hardware texture compression support was not detected’.
This is common with Nvidia and Intel graphics cards. If you have a Nvidia card, install the proprietary drivers.
If you have an integrated Intel Graphics card, open the terminal and type

sudo apt-get install driconf

After this, open driconf and under ‘Image Quality’ tab, set ‘Enable S3TC texture…’ to ‘Yes’

e) After logging in my screen goes black/screen freezes but can still hear the sound:
This one is a pain to fix, trust me, it took me the whole day to figure this baby out.
The problem here are the settings inside of LotRO, they are quite simply too high.
But the problem is that in order to set them straight, you need to be able to get to them.
And there's the catch 22.
If your screen goes black at the character select/character create screen, first start regedit from a terminal window.
Then click on HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Wine > Direct3D (if it doesn't exist, create it).
Create or change the key 'DirectDrawRenderer' to 'gdi'.
I am using PlayOnLinux to host my install, so the other options were preloaded and I'm not certain if they are important or not. I most likely will host my registry key some time.
The next step is to go to 'The Lord of the Rings Online' folder in your home directory, not the one in .wine or .PlayOnLinux.
Inside there you should find a file called 'UserPreferences.ini'. Open this file with your favourite text editor.
At the bottom of this file are all the settings for graphics. Wherever you see the word 'High' change this to 'Low'.
Also mentions of shadowing, blooms, and lighting set them all to false.
At the end, save the file, and close it.
Now open pyLotro and log in, with a bit of luck it should show the screen correctly and not freeze. From here go to the settings and select adv.graphics.
There you can change graphics to your pleasing but I highly recommend setting them only as high as medium, and whatever you really do not feel you need, to leave them as low, or turn them off.
Otherwise, the higher you enable the graphics, the slower the game, and in worst cases, you get the crash again.
This is for both the black screen and the freeze screen.

Then you may already know that Bryan Lunduke’s company Radical Breeze has for quite some time released a product called ‘Illumination Software Creator’.
If not, go check it out at radicalbreeze.com

Recently a competition was held by users of Illumination Software Creator to create a great piece of software where there would be 3 winners picked.
Seeing as though I had built AppBackup using this product, I felt it would be brilliant to enter it into the competition.

The competition was huge and a lot of great apps had been entered.
AppBackup won as the best utility.

But, the Linux Action Show was recording their 200th episode with guest speaker Richard Stallman to make it extra special.
What really threw me however, was that even when the competition was briefly mentioned, AppBackup was mentioned in great detail and enthousiasm.